


Crush: A Halloween story

by LadyJanelly



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Halloween, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 05:17:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5116910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyJanelly/pseuds/LadyJanelly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A freak earthquake in Dallas brings rescue teams from all over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crush: A Halloween story

**Author's Note:**

> There is a major warning on this one, but it totally spoils the story if I tell you ahead of time. I’m gonna put it in the end notes, so if you’re worried, or don’t read some things, please please check to the end and don’t get an unpleasant surprise.  
> (A big thank-you to iamsmilingallthetime for a second-set of eyes on this one. I’d been kind of frazzled with hubby’s health stuff and didn’t trust myself to be as coherent as I wanted to be, but I really wanted to post it before Halloween)

Tyler is in Oklahoma with Marshall, just wrapping up the (successful) search for a four-year-old who wandered away from a family camping trip and into a cave system, when the call comes.

Rhonda is habitually brusque and professional, this time even more so. “Tyler, how soon can you be ready to fly?” 

Tyler lifts the Jack Russell up onto the tailgate of his jeep, his phone tucked between his cheek and shoulder. 

“Do I have time to get a shower?” 

“I take it you haven’t checked the news,” she says, and across the parking lot people are looking at their phones, making calls. It looks like the normal aftermath of a big scare. 

“What happened?” he asks, checking Marshall’s paws for injury or twigs between his toes. 

“Earthquake in Dallas. We need you two. There are people…this city wasn’t built for earthquakes. I’m calling in everybody I can.”

“Shit,” Tyler breathes. He’s never been to Dallas, but that’s a big city, a really big number of people. “We flying or driving?”

“I’m gonna have them puddle-jump you to a regional airport north of the problem area and drive in from there. Bring what you need. Supplies are going to be tight. I’ll text you your travel plans.”

“Got it,” he says, knowing that she needs to get off the phone and onto another call. The itinerary pops up on his text messages and he does some quick math. Sink-bath at the airport is the best he can squeeze into that schedule.

“Come on Marshall. You wanna fly? You wanna fly, boy? Good boy.”

=============

Jamie coughs, blinks his eyes open and it’s so dark he can’t tell if he’s blind or not. Dust coats his skin, the lining of his nose. Something cool and damp crinkles on his forehead as it dries. He. He remembers shopping, some clothing store in old downtown. Hundred-year old building with the latest menswear fashions. He flexes his fingers and feels the supple lambskin leather jacket he’d been admiring before the roof fell in. 

He takes a breath, and coughs again, on the dryness of the dust. “Jor,” he calls, but. Jordie isn’t here. Jordie ditched him at the last minute to spend the day hanging out with Jason, and he’s alone. Every breath pulls weird at his chest-- the resulting coughs sharp in his ribs. 

He shifts around. There’s a pain in his left shoulder, another, duller one, in his left ankle. His feet are tangled, and he thinks the entire rack fell over him in the quake. 

Everything works though, he thinks. He can feel all his limbs, which is a hell of a lot better than it could be. He’s not pinned, but he can’t see to get out. He reaches, and there’s a beam a few feet above him, within reach of his fingertips. He can hear little tics and rattles as the building settles around him. 

He can smell the smashed pumpkins from the tasteful autumn decorations that had dressed up the showroom.

“Hey!” he calls out, into the darkness, into the weird stifling quiet. “Hey! I’m alive in here!” He coughs, and rests until he gets his wind back. Tries to figure out how big this was, how soon he can hope for help. He feels around, trying to find a gap he can use to slither out of the ruin, but the information his fingertips give his brain is too jumbled, too chaotic. He can’t make sense of the way the building fell. He’s safe now. Not crushed, not pinned. It feels like his little pocket is safer than other places might be.

He settles in for the long haul. 

==============

Jamie counts to two thousand. Pacing himself. Jordie knows where he is. Jordie will make sure somebody comes for him (if Jordie isn’t under a building of his own. If Jordie is okay. Jamie refuses to even entertain the idea that it could be otherwise). “Hey!” he yells, and waits. “Hey, I’m alive!”

And then he counts to three thousand.

==============

Jamie doses, exhausted and trapped and sore. The jackets are keeping his legs warm, but he hasn’t been able to get them untangled from the hangers and up to his body. The one he can reach with his fingers didn’t move easily, and he’d been scared to pull it too hard in case whatever is sitting on it is important, structurally. He’s getting cold, probably shocky. A soft noise wakes him, heart-pounding, waiting for the roof to fall just two feet more and crush the life out of him. 

It’s. Not the roof. There’s a scratching, coming from his left, and Jamie turns, trying to see something, anything.

“Hey!” he cries out, throat raw and dry, lips cracked. Hopes it’s enough because he doesn’t have much left in him to yell with. 

He blinks, because there is a light, a faint glow, wavering and growing larger. He hears a bark, small-dog yip high and sharp. 

“Hey,” a voice calls back. 

Jamie’s heart pounds. Oh god, oh thank god. “I’m here!” Jamie yells, suddenly so much more frantic now that help is on the way. “I’m here! Please. Please help me.”

“Hang on,” the voice says, male, low and warm and Jamie aches to be held by that voice, to be safe and out of this fucking tomb. 

Silence. Jamie shouts, but nobody answers for a long time. Jamie starts counting again. Passes one thousand and then two.

“Hey, are you hurt?” the man says, and he seems closer now. There’s a scrambling noise, and the light coming closer, and a little dog pops out of the rubble, a glowstick on its collar, a pair of water bottles in a harness hanging down either side of its back, bright orange booties on its little feet. 

“Not bad,” Jamie says back. He gets a bottle out and drinks, desperate gulps. 

“Okay,” the man says. “Okay. I’m Tyler. That’s Marshall in with you. I’ve flagged you here, and the rescue team will be digging you out as soon as they can.”

“Thank you,” Jamie says, heartfelt and relieved. “Thank you. I’m Jamie.”

The dog sniffs at him, and then crawls up on his chest, curling up and laying down. God, Jamie hadn’t realized how cold he was down here, and he tucks his fingers in between Marshall’s wiry short coat and his own chest. He can hear a static-broken voice, Tyler talking to someone on a walkie-talkie.

There’s a low rumble, caught in the small spaces and echoing. Marshall whines pitifully, and Jamie wraps a hand around his back. He wriggles under Jamie’s hand like he wants to go pushing back through the narrow tunnels to the outside. Jamie grabs onto the dog before he can scramble away, instinct demanding that he keep the small animal close and safe. There’s a handle on the top of the harness, a strong canvas strap and Jamie holds tight.

“Shit shit shit!” Jamie chants into the rumble. Until dust fills the air again, too thick for him to breathe, much less open his mouth without a damn good reason. 

The beam above his head shifts alarmingly but eventually stills. 

“Tyler?” Jamie calls when the aftershock is over. 

There’s a long pause. Marshall whimpers. 

“Tyler!” Jamie shouts, ignoring the ache in his ribs.

Tyler sounds hoarse when he answers, maybe a little disoriented. “Yeah. Yeah. I’m still here.”

Marshall whines, high and distressed, and Jamie does his best to soothe the dog. 

“Okay,” Jamie says, closing his eyes so the rubble above him doesn’t seem quite so close. Marshall settles down on him again, ears twitching, whining softly at broken intervals.

The walkie-talkie squawks and crackles.

“He likes it when you scratch along the edge of the harness,” Tyler says, like he can see Jamie’s ineffectual comforting techniques, and Jamie follows the directions, feels the dog settle a little more. “He’s a good boy. He was the runt of the litter. I hand-fed him myself when he was so small he could sleep in my pocket.”

“I always wanted a dog,” Jamie answers back. “I just thought. I traveled too much. Moved too often. It wouldn’t be fair to one.”

“It’s a lot easier to get cat sitters,” Tyler suggests, and Jamie smiles.

“But a cat isn’t a dog.” 

Tyler chuckles in the dark, and Jamie wonders what the face looks like, that goes with that voice. If his eyes are as warm and welcoming, if his smile is as bright. 

“So. My first visit to Dallas,” Tyler says. “Where should I get lunch tomorrow, do you think? What sounds good? Assuming it’s still standing.”

Jamie groans. “Way to help me forget I haven’t eaten,” he says, but he starts thinking out loud, his favorite places, what he orders. “Jordie always gets the cheese fries, even when it’s not on the meal plan.”

“Yeah? Who’s Jordie?” Tyler asks, teasing in the same way Jordie is whenever Jamie mentions a man’s name that Jordie doesn’t know.

Jamie wonders if he doesn’t have better things to do. If there aren’t other people who need his help here. It’s selfish, but he isn’t in a hurry to remind Tyler. Maybe the dog won’t leave someone hurt. Maybe Tyler thinks he’ll be in trouble without Marshall’s warmth against his chest. 

“Jordie and I aren’t dating. We’re. He’s. We’re brothers.”

“Ooh, so I have a chance?” Tyler asks, light and flirty. 

Jamie wonders if he really hit his head too hard to be talking like this. He’s gonna come out of this hole eventually. Outting himself to his rescuer isn’t the worst idea he’s had in his life, but it’s not far from it. That’d be a story for the media: Earthquake Turns Jamie Benn Gay! 

“When I get out of here, I’ll take you to the best restaurant in Dallas,” Jamie promises, blushing in the dark. “I mean. If you want to. If you do that. Date. Men.”

“Yeah,” Tyler says, soft. “That would be. Would be really nice.”

The silence that stretches feels awkward. Jamie isn’t sure what to do about it. 

“You sound Canadian,” Tyler says in the dark, and Jamie chuckles. 

“Yeah.”

“How’d you and your brother end up in freakin’ Texas?” he asks.

Jamie feels self-conscious telling it, about playing hockey and getting drafted and moving down. Feels like he’s bragging or catfishing or something, like he’s telling a tale too big to be believed, but Tyler never questions it. 

Jamie can hear the radio chatter a few times, someone shouting but there’s too much static to hear what they’re saying. Tyler ignores it, so it must not be meant for him.

Tyler and Jamie talk, until Jamie is hoarse and the water gone. Marshall doesn’t leave for more, and Jamie worries that means the passageway to the outside is blocked. They talk, only going quiet when two more aftershocks rock the ruins, each one smaller than the last.

Jamie tells Tyler all about his family, living with his brother, missing his parents and his sister. Tyler has two sisters, both younger. Mother and father that split up when he was in middle school. Tyler tells Jamie, about his day-job at an artisan pizza joint, how he got into the rescue dog thing a couple years back. 

“Not that it pays the bills, but I break even on donations, and I like it. Doing something good.”

“Believe me, I’m glad that’s how your life turned out,” Jamie says. The glowstick is almost dead. He’s really scared.

“Jamie,” Tyler says, soft like he’s right at Jamie’s side, like he’s whispering in his ear. “Hey. I gotta go so they can get through. They’re coming for you.”

“Wait!” Jamie says, “Wait, I just. Thank you. Thank you. I’ll see you when I get out?”

“Hang onto Marshall for me, okay? I don’t want him getting lost in this mess. It’s gonna be pretty chaotic, topside.”

Jamie feels a shift of air, a brush against his cheek. Marshall whines and nudges up under his chin. 

“Sure,” Jamie says, but Tyler doesn’t answer, already gone. 

It takes a long time, but he can hear the rescue workers moving, using jacks and braces, digging through the rubble, finding a place to anchor the bigger pieces to a crane so they won’t fall. 

The light, when the first crack appears over him, is blindingly bright, and he shields his face with one hand, holds Marshall with the other. Gravel falls in on them, a light cascade. A woman wearing an orange vest and a hardhat slips into the hole with him, does a quick check of his vitals, as other workers pull layers of brick and rubble off of him, untangle him from the racks and clothes that had fallen on him.

Her features are grim, her face dark with dust except for the creases around her eyes. He wonders how many dead she’s brought out today, how much sorrow she’s seen. 

“Are you hurt?” she asks, brusque. “Can you walk?” 

“Yeah.” His voice is hoarse from yelling and talking and breathing the dust. It’s mid-day now, and it had been mid-day when he was shopping. He’s been under that building for twenty-four hours, give or take. He’s tarving and sore, but. “I’m okay. I can walk.” 

She carefully pulls him to his feet, and he cradles Marshall to his chest with his better arm. He stands, cautious, taking inventory of his injuries.

He looks around, past her, for a face that will not be familiar. He knows he won’t recognize Tyler, but he feels like he should. He looks for a man heading towards him, or a man looking for Marshall. 

“Triage is over there,” the woman says. Points him towards a big pavilion-style tent.

“Wait,” Jamie says, “There was a man. One of your guys. In the building with me. Tyler.” 

The lines of tension on her face deepen, and she shakes her head. Jamie gapes, unable to process that it means what it must mean. 

“He. I was just…”

“We lost contact after the first aftershock,” she says. “We pulled him out, getting to you. He…He’d been gone for a while.”

“No,” Jamie whispers, loss stabbing through him like the point of a spear. His knees buckle. The woman catches his elbow, keeps him on his feet.

“We need a stretcher!” she yells over his shoulder. There is a minor commotion, people scurrying up to him, laying him back. He keeps hold of Marshall. He told Tyler he would. Told Tyler, who’d been dead for hours, that he would.

**Author's Note:**

> ======SPOILERS/WARNINGS========  
> DEATH!FIC  
> GHOST!FIC  
> NOT EVERYBODY MAKES IT OUT ALIVE  
> THE DOG DOESN’T DIE


End file.
